1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to utensils, and more particularly to dispensing utensils.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Serving utensils have long been used for food service. When food is served onto individual plates, however, food sometimes sticks or clumps onto the utensil and can only be removed by awkward assistance of another utensil or object.
Attempts have been made in the prior art to provide dispensing utensils that have mechanisms which scrape the food from the utensil's serving receptacle. Such devices are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,065,433 issued to G. Dow et al.
Dow teaches a serving utensil with a food pushing spring arms incorporated into the handle. The handle is squeezable in the vertical plane to move the food ejector forwardly and push food off of the serving receptacle. This type of device, however, does have some awkwardness in use. The handle is comprised of two arms angularly arranged and resiliently connected to each other. It is not as easy to hold these types of handles and one has to be careful not to squeeze the handle when food is in the receptacle and ejection is not desired.
There are also devices such as those taught in U.S. Pat. No. 1,816,904 issued to Heimroth wherein the handle for service is comprised of two arms but the handle arms act on parallel planes. As well, in Heimroth, there are resiliently arranged vertical arms that can be squeezed in the horizontal direction to push the food off of the server-receptacle. This arrangement is awkward because of its size and it also requires the user to move his/her hand from the handle to surround the vertical arms and squeeze them or to operate the device with two hands.
The art would be advanced if there was a device which had a firm handle, and that had a serving scraper mounted onto the device which could be activated without the user having to substantially release or alter his/her grip on the handle to scrap the food off of the utensil's receptacle.